Category Archives: politics

The rise of “libertarianism,” if we dare call it that, is the most dangerous trend in America. Of course, I’m not talking about real Lockean-Jeffersonian libertarianism–you know, the kind that emphasizes civic virtue–but rather the Ayn Rand-style libertarianism that scapegoats the poor and turns politics into a game of thrones. For them it’s sic semper tyrannis! Revolution or bust, baby.

Like baboons and bad relatives, they do not go away easily. Yesterday, Ron Paul, their beloved cranky uncle, spoke at a rally for Ken Cucinnelli, the “Tea Party” candidate for governor of Virginia. And, according to Politico, it got real weird real fast.

“The Second Amendment was not there so you could shoot rabbits,” he said. “Right now today, we have a great threat to our liberties internally.”

That’s right, they’re not strapping it on for varmints, if you know what I mean. What does it mean to say that “we have a great threat to our liberties internally?” Is he suggesting some dangerous John Brown shit here? Not for the “negroes” mind you, but for the truly oppressed business owners and squatters who have a right to do whatever the hell they want. It’s in the constitution…so they say.

But maybe I’m taking things out of context. Maybe the good doctor was misquoted, or just mangled his words…or maybe Lew Rockwell really said it and Dr. Paul just absent-mindedly mouthed it.

Evil? Class warfare? Given that he also invoked his much-beloved notion of nullification, I have a hunch where he’s going. This is no longer just weird. It is dangerous. At what point are these supposed grievances going to morph into a “long train of abuses?” These people scare the shit out of me, which is why I’m damned sure gonna fight ’em at the polls in the midterm elections. And you should too.

In the following NY Times video, we are given exclusive behind the scenes access to the congressional debate over immigration reform. Luchador Blue Demon Jr. settles the issue once and for all…and in a manner that even congressional Republicans can understand.

(Note: you have to click on the nytimes link to see it, but trust me, it’s worth it).

If you don’t know who Paul Ryan is, you better read this profile by Jonathan Chait–or if you don’t like Chait’s style, then try Ryan Lizza’s more nuanced piece in the New Yorker. Same bottom line: Paul Ryan is the sunny-faced embodiment of a naive (or cynical, in Chait’s analysis) politics of selfishness. He is the Republican point man for the old parlor game called “trickle down economics,” and he does it all with a winsome smile and a cheerful disposition–a very potent political cocktail in these fearful times.

Ryan has said that he entered politics as a result of reading Ayn Rand. Most people who admire Rand want nothing to do with government. There are those, however–and Ryan is among them–who want to get close enough to it that they can strangle it with their bare hands…and then kick its corpse. Ryan has been at this his entire adult life, starting his career under the tutelage of the original trickle-down, supply-sider Jack Kemp at a Washington D.C. “think tank” before eventually moving up the ladder to become a U.S. congressman by the precocious age of 28. Before 2009, he routinely proclaimed a great affinity for Ayn Rand’s ideas, even gushing to reporters that he encouraged his interns to read ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ Rand’s fictionalized political manifesto. But eventually the politically ascendant and Roman Catholic Ryan had to downplay Rand’s influence when some members of the press started explaining to the general public just how extreme her views really were. He now claims Thomas Aquinas (seriously) as a bigger influence. But a quick look at Ryan’s budget demonstrates just how little Aquinas and how much Rand there still is in the now 42-year-old chair of the Congressional Budget Committee.

If you are not familiar with Ayn Rand, or haven’t read her since high school–a time in one’s life when she may actually make sense, especially if you are an intelligent and somewhat isolated “nerd against the herd”–I urge you to watch the following interview conducted by Mike Wallace back in 1959. It is a full-throated defense of what she calls at various times “rational self-interest” and, yes, “selfishness.”

Rand’s idea of selfishness is not to be confused with the self-interest of Adam Smith, who in ‘Wealth of Nations’ actually called for a social safety net, as well as for certain government regulations (especially for the banking sector). In the long view of history, his insights into human nature seem considerably more nuanced than Rand’s, and therefore more “objective.” Rand, on the other hand, tends to describe the pursuit of wealth as a zero sum game, “us” vs. “them,” even going so far as to call altruism “evil” unless it is initiated by some act of selfishness. Starting at 4:43 of the video you can hear her defense of this position. Notice that aside from her propensity to create a straw man on one corner and run it over with a bulldozer on the other, almost everything she proposes about human nature is framed in terms of either/or, this or that, me or them–a sign of a very immature philosophy.

We can locate the core problem with “objectivism” in her discussion of altruism and love: only Ayn Rand, or someone with similar values (“virtues” she erroneously calls them), is truly worthy of love and respect. When pressed by Wallace on this, she even admits that by her standards there are very few people who deserve love. Any parent can point out the flaw in this argument, but then again, maybe I’m being selfish.

At 9:36 Wallace moves the discussion to politics, wrapping his questions around a theme I’ve been hearing a lot in President Obama’s recent speeches: are we not our brothers’ keepers? Rand, of course, believes this to be non-sense, a weakness of the will based on sentiment rather than logic. The welfare system and the taxes that support it, she famously asserts, “enslave” us by shackling the ability of our greatest achievers to create, which in turn keeps us all from achieving true freedom. But you could just as easily claim that no one is more creative than a man who has no idea where his next meal is coming from. Just ride the “L” sometime in Chicago and listen to the stories people tell for money. Imagine what they could create if they had it.

But the biggest flaw in Rand’s political philosophy is not that it celebrates self-interest, but rather that it ignores the historical and cultural context in which self-interest arose in the first place. The entire philosophy strikes me as a conclusion in search of a premise: It is good that I am wealthy. Why? Rand’s answer: Because I work harder and am more intelligent than others. The poor resent me for this, and are attempting to force me to support their inferior lives with my hard-earned money.

To use the word “enslaved” (as Rand does) to describe the tax rates of corporate bosses betrays a profound ignorance of the social fabric in which poverty, suffering, and dependence were created in this country. The political and economic context in which certain groups of people have been systematically denied access to the tools of a successful life (“separate but equal,” Jim Crow laws, reservations for American Indians, etc.) is completely ignored in so-called “objectivist” philosophy. It is as if all of our lives are lived in a vacuum of opportunity and dewy mornings in the country–that racism, sexism, greed and corruption don’t exist, only resentment does.

That Rand was speaking here in 1959, several years before the Civil Rights Act, displays a shocking degree of ignorance (or cruelty). This alone, to my mind, renders her philosophy an intellectual failure. Perhaps “objectivism” ignores history because its truths are too inconvenient–that some people become rich not because of their superior intellectual abilities, but because they have wielded the military, economic, and political power over others that has allowed them to do so. You can’t tell me that if George W. Bush had been born in the 9th Ward of Houston he would have become a wealthy oilman and owner of a baseball team, let alone president of the United States of America. He had a few advantages.

Social context matters, and if your social context is one that tells you that up until 1963 you didn’t deserve the same rights as white Americans (voting, education, business loans, etc.), then you are facing obstacles that Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney cannot possibly understand. Contrary to what many conservative politicians claim, liberals, progressives, and Democrats don’t want the government to simply provide handouts to those who do, in fact, game the system. What they want is simply for the system to be fair and humane. Might does not equal right.

A thorough critique of Rand’s political philosophy would take up more space than I care to devote here, but you get the picture. What is truly frightening is that we now have a serious vice presidential candidate in Paul Ryan who wants to implement Rand’s economic vision in this country. He began his crusade during the Bush II years when, along with John Sununu, he gave us the first “serious” proposal for the privatization of Social Security, which would have, in fact, led to its demise if ever enacted. And his current budget proposal should send shivers down your spine, especially if you are, like most of us, one or two paychecks away from the shelter.

To get the gist of Ryan’s budget plan, let’s take a quick look at how it deals with Medicare. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Ryan budget doesn’t at all address the absurd cost of health care for the elderly, but rather rewards insurance companies by simply shifting the financial burden from the federal government to the elderly and their families–and by a significant amount.

The Ryan plan would also replace Medicare’s guarantee of health coverage with premium-support payments to seniors (starting with new beneficiaries in 2023) that they would use to buy coverage from private insurance companies or traditional Medicare. The growth in these payments each year would be limited to the percentage increase in per capita GDP plus one-half percentage point. For more than 30 years, however, health care costs per beneficiary in the United States have risen an average of about two percentage points per year faster than GDP per capita. CBO thus projects that under the Ryan budget, federal Medicare expenditures on behalf of an average 67-year-old beneficiary would, by 2050, be 35 percent to 42 percent lower than under current law.

Under the Ryan budget, moreover, Medicare would no longer make payments to health care providers such as doctors and hospitals; it would instead provide premium-support vouchers to beneficiaries that they’d use to help buy coverage from private insurance companies or traditional Medicare. Therefore, the only way to keep Medicare cost growth within the GDP +0.5 percentage-point target would be to limit the annual increase in the government’s premium-support vouchers. That would very likely cause the vouchers to grow more slowly than health care costs — and hence purchase less coverage with each passing year. Over time, more costs would likely be pushed on to beneficiaries.

And this is just a small sample of how Ryan’s accounting works. Overall, it is estimated that 3/5s of his proposed cuts to federal expenditures are in programs that support the poor and most vulnerable in our society. Yet, given historic lows in tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, and historic highs in the percentage of overall wealth held by the top 1%, Ryan does not propose even the slightest increase in their taxes.

This is what happens when an immature philosophy takes hold in an ambitious, powerful, and well-to-do politician’s mind. I imagine it would be hard to develop empathy for the poor when so much of your professional and personal identity is wrapped up in a political philosophy that does not in fact see them as worthy of love. It is possible–and I certainly hope that it is true–that he has more Aquinas in him than Rand, but the proof is in the pudding, as they say. And given Mitt Romney’s recent speeches and political ads emphasizing Obama’s supposed embrace of the “welfare state,” I think it is fair to view his selection of Paul Ryan as an endorsement of his party’s most radical, anti-government, and inhumane ideas. Although we may at times be tempted to dismiss politics as a cynical exercise in power, I don’t think Paul Ryan is cynical at all. I just think he is ignorant, having wrapped himself in a childish philosophy that fails to cultivate empathy for those who struggle to meet their most basic needs. One can only hope that this campaign reveals the truth about this naive and extremely dangerous political philosophy.

Yesterday was Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday. The fact that his body left us in 1967 seems almost irrelevant given the immense shadow that his music casts on our consciousness (and conscience) today. His job, he said, was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Man, we could use a little bit more of that these days.

Woody’s genius was his ability to make serious ideas seem simple–but he didn’t simplify them, he just made them make sense. You could say he just cut through the bullshit. Part of his appeal was that his rhythms were so deceptively simple (and catchy), often direct borrowings from old Appalachian standards, but his lyrics…well, they changed the game for everyone thereafter. Just ask Bob Dylan.

Nancy Griffith used to tell a story about the time her father took her to see Townes Van Zandt perform. He wanted her to see “the best songwriter in Texas! He’d be the best in the world, but Woody Guthrie is from Oklahoma.”

If we were to adopt a new national anthem this would be my nominee. The current one is fine, but it’s good to remember that it too came from a folk tradition. What I love about this song, and what I love about America (but also drives me crazy sometimes), is its orneriness and high spirit. And there ain’t no one more ornery and high-spirited than Jimmy Martin, the self-proclaimed “King of Bluegrass.”

If you were half-asleep, or half-drunk, and you saw this video of Mitt Romney, you might think he was President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services (admitting, of course, that the premise of anyone being only “half” asleep or “half” drunk while watching a Romney YouTube video is preposterous). But that was back in 2007, when the term “individual mandate” meant “personal responsibility.”

We expect a certain amount of hypocrisy from presidential candidates–even the best ones. But I don’t recall anyone being on the level of this dude.

Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade and the patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs, has a problem with President Obama, and with government spending…unless, of course, it benefits his family’s baseball team.

According to the New York Times, Ricketts has hired some big-time national strategists to create propaganda films designed to enlighten us about the “real” Barack…(ahem)..Hussein...Obama. The proposal discussed in the Times article appears to have been designed by Sean Hannity. Note the subtle references to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, over and over again. By the end of this tour de force it is clear why Obama has been such an irrational hot-head: he hates America, he is in over his head, and he is cocky. After he passes reparations legislation it will be a miracle if the Ricketts family has anything left in the bank (except for the black sheep daughter, who is actually an Obama supporter).

According to Ricketts’s “super PAC” spokesman:

‘Our plan is to do exactly what John McCain would not let us do: Show the world how Barack Obama’s opinions of America and the world were formed,’ the proposal says. “And why the influence of that misguided mentor [Jeremiah Wright] and our president’s formative years among left-wing intellectuals has brought our country to its knees.

If only Sarah Palin had thought of that.

But after a full day of blistering criticism from the real America, Mr. Ricketts decided to reject the film. According to his spokesman, it just wasn’t in keeping with his personal style of politics. Nevertheless, Ricketts does not reject the basic argument.

Apparently referring to a Wright ad that was produced for the McCain campaign by Mr. Davis’s firm but never used, the proposal opens with a quote from Mr. Ricketts: “If the nation had seen that ad, they’d never have elected Barack Obama.

O.k., so Ricketts is a crusty old man with a dubious faith in the value of advertisement as historical commentary, and he’s got a lot of free speech money to spend. He can do whatever he wants to with it, right? The supreme court says so.

The problem with Ricketts’ politics–and this is something that the authors of the Times piece miss–isn’t that he foolishly blows his money on old dirt that won’t change anyone’s mind anyway, but that his position on government spending is so profoundly hypocritical. He is, of course, against it. He does, of course, benefit from it.

Like many professed fiscal conservatives, Joe Ricketts hates, hates, hates government spending. This is because he earned his money, unlike those of us who just want to suck the government teat. And like everyone else who makes his living trading stocks and bonds, he knows that nothing meaningful in this life is ever handed to you. In a free market, you either sink or swim. The government doesn’t decide; the market does.

And this, of course, is the problem with Barack Obama’s government stimulus. Obama wants the government to choose which businesses survive and which do not. He has no understanding of how the free market works!

The Ricketts’ family, on the other hand, does, and they know how to spend government money. In order to secure financing for the Cubs’ new spring training facility in Mesa, Arizona they even created their own little government stimulus. They called it a “public-private partnership.” It turns out that “stimulus” is what the president does, but “public-private partnership” is what the Ricketts do.

Tom, the “politically neutral” son who runs the family’s baseball operation, was given the dirty work of convincing mad as hell tea partiers in Arizona to vote for a tax increase to pay for new facilities for his family’s privately owned baseball team. Boy is he good. In November, 2010 (you remember November, 2010…) he procured $99 million dollars’ worth of taxes from the citizens of Mesa. On the official Major League Baseball website, MLB.com, this feat is presented as a triumph.

In a show of tremendous support in a particularly difficult economy, Mesa voters recognized the potential of partnering with the Chicago Cubs on an economic investment and future we can, together, create for the city,” said Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts. “Our public-private partnership means jobs for Mesa, tourism dollars for the city and the region and will drive private investment in Mesa and in the development of Wrigleyville West.

So, let me get this straight. In 2009 the Ricketts family bought the Cubs for over $800 million, then almost immediately asked taxpayers to buy them a spring training facility for $99 million? It would be nice to know how much of this was in the plan the commisioner approved.

But Mesa “needed” them. The Cubs had been playing there every spring for nearly fifty years and had become an integral part of the community. In fact, the Ricketts’s tax pitch played hard on this theme of community spirit, which sounds a lot like socialism to me. But it also played hard on the threat to move elsewhere if the city didn’t fork over the loot. Now we’re back to market principles.

By the way, here is what $99 million gets you these days (from MLB.com).

The City’s investment in the design and construction is capped at $84 million (the Cubs will cover any of these costs if they exceed $84 million). The City will also provide public infrastructure (roads, utilities, parking, etc.), the cost of which the City estimates will not exceed $15 million. The Cubs will manage and operate the new stadium and facility, saving Mesa almost $2 million each year to care for the new publicly-owned ballpark and training facilities.

I like the last line best. “…saving Mesa almost $2 million each year….” And now the Ricketts are begging for $200 million from Illinois taxpayers for a renovation of Wrigley field. How much does that save the state? What’s the word that Michele Bachmann likes so much? Chutzpah.

It looks like President Obama’s politics, and not just his sense of justice, is right on the gay marriage issue. Prominent Republican pollster Jan Van Lohuizen, who worked for George W. Bush during the infamous Ohio gay-bashing campaign, has sent the following memo–conveniently leaked to “flagged by” Politico’s Jonathan Martin–to influential Republican activists. It is a blunt warning to not run against gay rights, including the right to marry. It is remarkable how quickly (within the last few years) the winds have shifted on this issue. Now, the question is how the Republican party will handle Christian fundamentalists who see this as THEE issue?

(Note: I was first made aware of this development by Andrew Sullivan’s blog; the following memo is reprinted from Politico).

Memorandum

From: Jan R. van Lohuizen

Date: 05/11/12

Re: Same Sex Marriage

Background: in view of this week’s news on the same sex marriage issue, here is a summary of recent survey findings on same sex marriage:

Support for same sex marriage has been growing and in the last few years support has grown at an accelerated rate with no sign of slowing down. A review of public polling shows that up to 2009 support for gay marriage increased at a rate of 1% a year. Starting in 2010 the change in the level of support accelerated to 5% a year. The most recent public polling shows supporters of gay marriage outnumber opponents by a margin of roughly 10% (for instance: NBC / WSJ poll in February / March: support 49%, oppose 40%).

The increase in support is taking place among all partisan groups. While more Democrats support gay marriage than Republicans, support levels among Republicans are increasing over time. The same is true of age: younger people support same sex marriage more often than older people, but the trends show that all age groups are rethinking their position.

Polling conducted among Republicans show that majorities of Republicans and Republican leaning voters support extending basic legal protections to gays and lesbians. These include majority Republican support for:

Protecting gays and lesbians against being fired for reasons of sexual orientation

Protections against bullying and harassment

Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Right to visit partners in hospitals

Protecting partners against loss of home in case of severe medical emergencies or death

Legal protection in some form for gay couples whether it be same sex marriage or domestic partnership (only 29% of Republicans oppose legal recognition in any form).

Recommendation: A statement reflecting recent developments on this issue along the following lines:

“People who believe in equality under the law as a fundamental principle, as I do, will agree that this principle extends to gay and lesbian couples; gay and lesbian couples should not face discrimination and their relationship should be protected under the law. People who disagree on the fundamental nature of marriage can agree, at the same time, that gays and lesbians should receive essential rights and protections such as hospital visitation, adoption rights, and health and death benefits.

Other thoughts / Q&A:

Follow up to questions about affirmative action: “This is not about giving anyone extra protections or privileges, this is about making sure that everyone – regardless of sexual orientation – is provided the same protections against discrimination that you and I enjoy.”

Why public attitudes might be changing: “As more people have become aware of friends and family members who are gay, attitudes have begun to shift at an accelerated pace. This is not about a generational shift in attitudes, this is about people changing their thinking as they recognize their friends and family members who are gay or lesbian.”

Conservative fundamentals: “As people who promote personal responsibility, family values, commitment and stability, and emphasize freedom and limited government we have to recognize that freedom means freedom for everyone. This includes the freedom to decide how you live and to enter into relationships of your choosing, the freedom to live without excessive interference of the regulatory force of government.

I know that there were many political calculations leading up to all this, but what President Obama did today will stand as a significant moment in civil rights history. The fact that politics was involved hardly makes it cynical, and certainly doesn’t make it immoral. This seems like the kind of thing that politics is meant to do. After all, as Ta-Nehisi Coates notes today in his blog at the Atlantic, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a “political” act, but it also revealed Lincoln’s character, which by the way, had “evolved” (the word of the day, it seems) from that of a man willing to compromise on something as essential as human dignity, to that of a man who was willing to pay the ultimate price for justice.

Predictably, this is making Republicans froth at the mouth. What doesn’t? It seems to me that a party that was just recently headed by a gay man, Ken Mehlman, would recognize the need to get on the right side of history. Sadly, they will cynically claim that this is both a politically expedient move by the President and that same-sex marriage is opposed by most Americans. Contradictory? Since when has that been a problem? Shit, that might be a winning strategy!

Look. Obama has not codified anything here, and I am sure that in the short-term we will see a lot more fear-driven backwoods bullying like we saw in North Carolina. This is really scary to a lot of people. But nothing great has ever been accomplished without a fight, and it is nice to know that the president is willing to throw a punch every now and then. Now, if he would just drop the “leave it up to the states” bit….